The man in charge of Jean-Talon market talks here about how it has to change following the pandemic. He’s into adding more restaurant spaces and upscale boutiques. An internal crisis is mentioned but not explained.
Updates from August, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A new women’s pro hockey league will start playing in January, and Montreal will have one of the six planned teams.
Josh
The big news here is that two kinda, sorta rival leagues are merging (essentially) into one, and the new one will be collaborating with and have the support of the NHL. Much more likely to survive long-term than either of the previous circuits were.
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Kate
A promenade near the river in Lasalle has been named after union chief Michel Chartrand, who died in 2010.
Blork
Soon the deer will move in. (The park in Longueuil that has the famous deer problem is Parc Michel-Chartrand.)
Orr
Riverside along there (Lachine, Verdun, Lasalle) are some of Montreal’s loveliest parcs and places.
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Kate
Someone vandalized the bust of Camille Laurin on St‑Urbain at Sherbrooke with chains and paint, and not for the first time. What a terrible, terrible tragedy. It would be such a shame if it happened again, multiple times, in the future.
Orr
That is more-or-less diagonally opposite the headquarters of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste which has a De Gaulle bust located in front of it and a plaque titled “Vive la liberté” which should come with an irony warning.
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Kate
Ragweed season is lasting longer than it used to, and is making more of us deal with itchy eyes and sneezing. Sud-Ouest borough is trying to counter it by having people tend other plants where ragweed otherwise might be growing.
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Kate
Shots were fired late Monday at a house in Mercier, but nobody was hurt and no arrests have been made.
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Kate
Ridership of the STM is slowly returning to pre‑pandemic levels, with the evening and weekend numbers recovering faster than those around rush hour.
Blork
Is that good news or bad? Pre-pando we were all complaining about overcrowding.
Kate
I think it’s good. It’s not rush hour numbers that are back, and the STM needs the ridership for the revenue and to encourage the political will to support and extend public transit.
Forgetful
I don’t know Kate. Funding dependent on ridership numbers and political support is just too prone to disfunction and vulnerable to crises and structural changes. It also fosters unhealthy competition between the multiple operators we have in Montreal. Stakeholders need to take new approaches to financing the network. The Ministry of Sustainable Mobility is supposedly working on a new revenue model, more on this this fall I believe.
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Kate
The mayor says that keeping the Camillien‑Houde just as it is now is still one of the options being considered by the city.
Spi
obligatory comment about a bridge being for sale.
Orr
The hundreds of plastic posts preventing u-turns all the way along CH are not doing much to improve the beauty of the park. Although no cyclists have been murdered by u-turning cars since they went up, which is a real positive improvement in my books.
I liked the closed to cars but open to emergency vehicles option. The jewel of Montreal should not be an autoroute-capacity shortcut between neighbourhoods.
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Kate
The investigation into the fatal fire in Old Montreal in March has become a murder investigation by the SPVM. It is no longer thought to be an accidental fire.
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Kate
Growing numbers of old people are going missing in Montreal. This weekend, for example, an 85‑year‑old is missing in Pierrefonds, but every week I see at least one, and often several, brief news pieces about older people who’ve wandered off. Usually I don’t blog them, and they turn up.
The gerontologist quoted by TVA says it’s simply because we have a growing number of old people, and a percentage of them are bound to be getting confused about where they are.
Update: The missing man has been found dead and police say it isn’t a criminal case.
Ephraim
Is it time to AirTag old people?
Kate
I wonder what the law would say if someone operating a seniors’ residence made it mandatory for the residents to be tagged.
Ephraim
Well the AirTag or TileTag would be something you would wear. It’s not like we are asking adults to be chipped, like dogs and cats
jeather
I know people who put airtags or the like on their pets, the chip is only useful once the animal is found, not while it is missing. If I had escape artist cats I might do the same, but luckily mine have no interest in leaving my balcony.
Kate
jeather, I thought an airtag would show you where something or somebody is. Whereas when you chip a pet, the chip needs to be read at a vet or animal shelter to be useful.
Blork
Kate, you are correct that an Airtag will show you were the tag is. I think jeather has two separate ideas in the same sentence: (a) Some people put Airtags on their pets; (b) Chips only work when you find the animal.
jeather
Yes, I know people who put airtags on their chipped pets due to the fact that the chips are only useful once a lost pet has been found. If I had pets where this was a concern I would do the same.
Kevin
There’s a big market for Dementia Trackers. They’re built into everything from bracelets to pendants to insoles. The monthly plan for Telus’ version is about $50 a month.
Uatu
The Royal Vic used to have dementia patients wear a giant orange shirt with the hospital logo on it and there were posters everywhere saying not to let them leave the ward or to report anyone wearing it that are wandering around. Airtag tech seems to be a better alternative because in the next 10yrs there probably would’ve been a sea of orange shirts
Ephraim
And there is no monthly for AirTag or Tile. They bounce signals off of each other to tell you where they are.
dhomas
They don’t really bounce signals off the other tags. But every time an iOS device gets within a few meters (the range of Bluetooth, about 30m) of the tag, it reports back to the network and then back to the owner.
My brother’s AirTagged luggage got stolen in Rome a few weeks ago and he was able to track it to Casablanca, Morocco. Not that there is anything he could do about it now.
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Kate
A man was stabbed on Ste‑Catherine near Drummond early Monday, during a robbery, and there have been several arrests.
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Kate
Shots were fired Saturday evening in St‑Léonard, but nobody turned up wounded.
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Kate
I’m a bit late picking this up, but regular and social media have all recently reported on standup comic Sonia Bélanger, added to the lineup of a comedy club in Gatineau after complaints of the constant all‑male participation there. Sonia’s image is an AI construct, though – and she never shows up to perform.
steph
As far as clever marketing goes, this caught my attention.
jeather
I guess it will turn away the people (feminists) they don’t want as clients and attract the people (assholes) they do, so it’s effective.
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Kate
Following this week’s report that Montreal leads in urban farming, La Presse asks whether there are too many urban farms now.
Ephraim
Urban farms, urban chickens, urban fishing, keith urban….
Kate
Last year Le Devoir reported that Silo No. 5 might be turned into a vertical farm, although I’ve seen nothing about the plan since.
That would be a great use for it as well as for the Canada Malting silos mentioned two posts below. The city can always use more fresh veg that doesn’t have to be transported from Mexico in the winter. And growing food is a better use for electrical current than mining bitcoin.
Nicholas
I get using empty rooftops, but couldn’t we just build some greenhouses or buildings off-island where there’s plentiful land and use the valuable urban land for people? The Netherlands is a great model for year-round produce and agriculture complementing dense urban environments, and has so much now that it’s the second largest agricultural exporter by value in the world. The Quebec agricultural zone is about 50% larger than the Netherlands in area, yet would only have to feed half the population the Dutch does.
mare
@Nicolas The Netherlands could have so many greenhouses because the industrial rates for their plentiful supplies of natural gas were super low. In the last decade many gas production fields had to be closed though, because of earthquakes (!) and damaged buildings caused by unstable soil after it was ‘hollowing out’ by the gas extraction. So the Netherlands then needed to import gas, which was expensive and now really expensive because the war in Ukraine and the attempts to limit using Russian gas.
Quebec also has cheap energy so we could do something similar, although we don’t have such a surplus capacity at times, and a lot of energy is needed when the outside temperature is 50 °C lower than the ideal growing temperature.
I read a study that shipping fruits and vegetables by plane from areas where they have multiple growing seasons is actually more ecological, even when counting transport. Higher yields, less fertilizer, faster growth. We also lack (cheap) labour for harvesting, and because all produce varieties are ready at the same time and the abundance means the wholesale prices are so low, that it sometimes is more economical to let the fruits and vegetables rot in the fields.
Blork
I wish they had included a list of the restaurants who are receiving Ahuntsic-farmed arctic char (delivered by bycycle!) that is so fresh the chefs have to let them sit for a while before preparing them. As somebody from Eastern Canada, I like my fish fresh, and finding it that fresh is rare up in this burgh.
Aineko Marcx
@Kate After reading that Silo No. 5 of you last year, I asked one of my friend who is quite into the urban farm biz. He told me that ‘plan’ is smoke and mirrors of the potential project developer, whose entire interest in urban farming is limited to facilitate the luxury real estate project under the guise of the posh concept.
DeWolf
@Blork Have you been to T&T yet? It’s one of the only supermarkets in Montreal that has a decent selection of “swimming fish” (as my mother-in-law calls them). Most places around here only keep shellfish alive, not fish. It’s a bit far for you but they’ll be opening a location in Brossard next year.
Nicholas
@Mare, I generally agree. The premise I had was mostly “If you want local food, especially all year round.” Large scale ag may have its issues, but it is much more efficient than planters on a roof. Bellies of planes may go empty anyway, and some produce can be shipped by boat, which is really efficient. There’s that image that goes around every month of pears grown in Argentina and packaged in Thailand that are sold in the US, and it uses less energy than driving two blocks to the store. And yes, our labour market is very tight now.
Jonathan
@blork Their website lists where the fish can be bought and eaten
Blork
@DeWolf, I have not yet been to T&T, but I’ve seen the “swimming fish” at Kim Phat. Pretty impressive. @Jonathan, thanks for the tip!
I haven’t had Arctic char very often, but when I’ve had it I really liked it. My first arctic char was a frozen one that I bought from an Inuk man in Cambridge Bay many years ago. It was still frozen when I arrived back in Montreal, which if nothing else was a testament to his packaging. It was big — probably 2 kilos or more — and was delicious.
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Kate
A man killed his kids and himself in a town near Joliette on Saturday. TVA asks how such dramas can be avoided but has no answers. Radio‑Canada names the man.
Odds are the couple were breaking up, and this was the man’s response – that seems to be the usual pattern. But we can’t assume that every family breakup risks a massacre.
Updates: TVA says Ianik Lamontagne was arrested for harassing his ex two days before the killings. TVA also says the man was suffering from severe depression but another headline cites a quote from a conjugal violence activist saying that conjugal violence isn’t a mental health problem – not sure what to make of that.
They also note a coroner’s report saying that 56 kids were killed by a parent between 2011 and 2020, presumably in Quebec specifically.
azrhey
the conjugal violence, or any kind of violence isn’t a mental health problem because most people with mental health issues aren’t violent and a lot of violent people do not have mental health issues. There IS a correlation, but not a causation.
Kate
Mental illness, at least in the legal sense, is about not having control over one’s acts. Of course this can never be completely ascertained, so that in court you have to take the word of the accused and his psychiatrists. Whereas conjugal violence is simply a choice to harm members of one’s household because hurting, frightening or dominating them gives you power or pleasure. Not a healthy balance but not insanity.*
Monday, La Presse has a more thoughtful piece on the personal crises that can tip an otherwise sane person to violent acts.
*I’ve been reading The World: A Family History of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore and it’s an incredible recitation of the terrible things people have done, massacre and torture and murder – often to members of their own family – in the struggle for power, all over the world, in different ways, from antiquity to the present day.
dwgs 18:08 on 2023-08-29 Permalink
That’s what they’ve been doing for the last few years. I guess some people like it but I go to buy local produce and sometimes some local cheese and eggs. If it becomes a touristy see and be seen place I will stop going. They’ve already ruined Atwater.
Kate 18:41 on 2023-08-29 Permalink
I don’t mind the cafés around the perimeter but the central alleys should remain 100% local sellers of produce.
Blork 19:25 on 2023-08-29 Permalink
I agree with Kate. BTW I was there today around noon and wow is it ever much nicer on a Tuesday than a Saturday (if, like me, crowds bring out your inner misanthrope).
carswell 19:27 on 2023-08-29 Permalink
No issues with adding more restaurant stalls but the offer to date is completely overshadowed by that at Atwater market. With the exception of Hamel, upscale boutiques don’t do well at the market — there’s a largish space a few doors west of Hamel where at least two or three versions of a gourmet shop, with prices to match, have lasted less than a year — so I’m not sure that’s the right tack for the market to take.
Interesting to read dwgs’s comment. While Atwater market has changed over the years and I miss the former Fruiterie and a couple of other vendors, I don’t find the current iteration inferior to its predecessors. Several of the resto stalls are first-rate (Satay Bros, Falafel Yoni, Alwyn’s BBQ, the noodle place, etc.), the butchers are better than ever and there are now two cheese mongers and a handful of interesting produce vendors (Les trouvailles gourmandes de Fanny, the corn-only stall at the south end that’s the only place I buy fresh corn, a great organic farmer from Freilighsburg who’s there only on Wednesdays, etc.). Plus you have one of the province’s best SAQs just across the street.
DeWolf 23:12 on 2023-08-29 Permalink
I live very close to the Jean-Talon market and I go there almost every day to buy groceries. There’s an enormous amount of space so it can handle some new concepts without ruining the market as an actual place to buy groceries. Most importantly, it’s much better now than it was a few years ago before the crisis (which had to do with corrupt management conspiring with corrupt stall owners) and you had too many stalls selling subpar produce at marked up prices.
Orr 13:03 on 2023-08-31 Permalink
We appreciate that this year Marché Jean Talon restored the bicycle parking at the south-east entrance that was ignored, then destroyed, then forgotten that it ever existed, and is now restored this year, along with some seating there. Nice!
I note that the fresh corn is dropping in price, but tends to be a bit over-ripe for my tastes to be eaten fresh. But with a corn kernel slicer (a miracle tool by Oxo) the kernels can be removed and are in fact great in salads, etc. Anyhow, it is variable day to day how ripe the cobs are, but my tip is to not take the biggest cobs.
carswell 18:52 on 2023-08-31 Permalink
@Orr Candide’s chef/owner John Winter-Russell told me his way of dealing with the super-sweetness of local corn — which has to do with variety, not ripeness, btw — is to let it sit in the fridge for a day or two, during which time some of the sugar converts into starch. Also, as mentioned above, the corn-only vendor at the south end of Atwater market sells less-than-saccharine varieties from their farm between mid-July and late August/early September; they were there this afternoon, but the prized yellow ears are finished for the season.